< Previous20 / JULY 2019www.digitalstudiome.com COVER STORYCOVER STORY a great year in terms of theatrical revenues. So, how do we grow the theatrical busi- ness? How do we allow independent fi lm makers to fi nd distribution models that work for their fi lms without losing the freedom or telling the stories the way they want to be told? I don’t think that’s easy. That’s why in Europe there is a lot of government sup- port and a lot of public funding which we don’t have in the Arab world. This is also why Arab festivals have a role to play in supporting independent fi lmmakers pro- duce, develop and distribute their fi lms. As president, what is your vision for the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF)? I want to build a strong industry compo- nent and make that a big part of CIFF. We started that last year with Cairo Industry Days. Hopefully this year, it shall be big- ger and better. I am really trying to reconnect the audience to Cairo Film Festival and grow the audience in order to reach not just more screens, but also film fans – Cairo residents and even people from all over Egypt who come to the festival to catch films that normally they won’t have a chance to see. There’s a real appetite for films here. The festival hasn’t been able to market itself or its programme to audiences around Egypt. Last year, we were lucky in managing to double our ticket sales from the previous year. But it’s still not enough in a city like Cairo where we have 18 to 20 million people. We should be selling a lot more tickets. I am also trying to connect CIFF more with the international community by inviting more international press, more fi lm makers, industry executives, producers, distributors and really trying to build that connection and also to get people interested in Arab cinema and see what Egyptian cin- ema has to off er. I’ll also try to bring in bigger names, as that helps attract more interna- tional as well as local press. What initiatives will be launched at this year’s edition? Really, the initiatives that we launched last year were quite successful, such as the Vir- tual Reality section. So we plan to bring them back this year, perhaps in a bigger way. Cairo Film Connection is now in its sixth edition and a big part of Cairo Industry Days because it’s off ering support – fi nancial, logistical and sometimes sales and distribu- tion support. So it’s really a great platform to launch projects whether they are in develop- ment or post production stage. There are quite a few fi lm festivals coming up in the region now. Is this a maturing of the market? How will Cairo stand out? It goes back to what we talked about — are all these fi lm festivals popping up around the region good for the industry? It’s great as long as the festivals are not hurting each other : with clashing schedules, competing for the same fi lms or the same guests. It would be good to have some coordination between the Arab fi lm festivals. But the more festivals there are, the more fi lms get platforms to be shown to diff er- ent audiences around the Arab world. It increases chances for fi nding support, giving fi lmmakers opportunities to interact with experts and industry executives from all over the world. As the audience, we get to see fi lms that we normally wouldn’t be able to in our local theatres I am happy there are also strong festivals coming up in places that didn’t have cinema before, like Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea festival. They have hired an artistic director and started planning the programme and indus- try support. Overall, this can only benefi t Egyptian and Arab cinema. Hefzy’s Film Clinic supports in- dependent fi lmmakers and conducts workshops across the region “WE TRIED TO MAKE PARANORMAL THE WAY WE BELIEVED IT SHOULD BE MADE. LUCKILY WHEN NETFLIX DECIDED TO ENTER THE MIDDLE EAST, IT WAS A GOOD OPPORTUNITY BECAUSE THEY WERE REALLY THE ONLY PLATFORM THAT SAW THE POTENTIAL OF THE SHOW”FROM STAGE TO SCREEN N National Theatre Live recently broadcast the Arthur Miller classic All My Sons from London’s Old Vic theatre to a cinema screen in Dubai. Technical producer Chris Bretnall discusses the nuances and challenges of live broadcasting a play By Shalaka Paradkar Photography by Tom Wren ational Theatre Live will turn 10 on June 25 this year. The first-ever NT Live broadcast kicked off with Phédre, starring Academy Award-winner Helen Mirren. Since then, over 80 theatre productions have been shown in 3500 venues world- wide, reaching an overall audience of nearly 9 million people. From Antony and Cleopatra with Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Sienna Miller, to Angels in America with Andrew Garfi eld and Russell Tovey and Rosentcrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with Daniel Radcliff e and Hedda Gabler with Ruth Wilson, audiences in UK and around the world have been able to watch theatre broadcast to a cinema near them, through the magic of NT Live. Extending the National Theatre’s digital reach, NT Live broadcasts some of the best of British theatre to over 2,500 venues in 65 countries. This June, the Arthur Miller classic, All My Sons, starring starring Sally Field and Bill Pullman, was broadcast live from NT Live broadcast of The Madness of George III from the Nottingham Playhouse BEHIND THE SCENES / NT LIVE www.digitalstudiome.comJULY 2019 / 21 FEATURE / BEHIND THE SCENESLondon’s The Old Vic to cinemas in cities around the world, including — for the fi rst time — Dubai. This unique convergence of stage and cinema has been made possible through the expertise of Creative Broadcast Solu- tions’ Chris Bretnall, who has served as NT Live’s technical producer for all 10 of its seasons. National Theatre Live is not about turn- ing a stage play into a fi lm, Bretnall avers. The intent instead is to faithfully capture the live performance. “The idea of NT Live is to recreate what you would get from the best seat in the house in a theatre, in a cinema that is somewhere in the UK or Europe or further worldwide,” he says. “The original inten- tion was to take the National Theatre to those who couldn’t aff ord or haven’t got the time or the ability to buy tickets for the theatre and give them a replication of what happens in a theatre, in a cinema of their choice close to home. In essence, that was the brief to me.” Adjustments are made for lighting, sound and make-up; however preserving the integrity of the play director’s vision is non-negotiable. Bretnall and his team’s task is focused on transposing the stage picture to work on camera as eff ectively as possible. The camera choices and set-up vary according to production, usually ranging from fi ve to eight cameras, which are cut live into a single feed. “Everything else is negotiable but the starting point is that we faithfully repro- duce the intentions of the stage director and design team on the 2D screen that they have designed for a 3D live theatre experience,” Bretnall elaborates. “We try to do as little intervention as possible to accommodate the technicalities of the broadcast system. When watching a play, audiences use their eyes and ears to interpret what’s un- folding on the stage. And they do it better than any TV camera could. “When you are sitting in a seat in a theatre, your brain and eye works out what they want to see at any one time, then fl it around the stage, and you build the story yourself by looking around,” Bretnall shares. “When the play is on a screen and is being broadcast as cinema, it is the TV di- rector who has to narrate the story for you, he has to select what you are going to look at and what you are going to listen to at that time – that is the biggest challenge. How do you tell that story captured by the camera on to the screen?” With the human eye being better at see- ing diff erences in light, Bretnall says the lighting design has to be adjusted so viewers in the cinema can feel like they are watch- ing live theatre. “Your eyes can see around 30 kinds of diff erences in light but a TV camera can only perceive 13. We have to modify that thinking. If the director off ers a close shot of somebody, we want to hear them close. If they are in a wide or perspective shot, we want to hear that as wide and open. So there are challenges in changing our audio for every single shot. “We put radio mikes on every performer but we can’t control every word spoken. So the big technical challenge is reproducing for the screen, what you can sort out for yourself in a theatre.” “THE IDEA OF NT LIVE IS TO RECREATE WHAT YOU WOULD GET FROM THE BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE IN A THEATRE, IN A CINEMA THAT IS SOMEWHERE IN THE UK OR EUROPE OR FURTHER WORLDWIDE” Chris Bretnall, Creative Broadcast Solutions NT Live broadcast of The Tragedy of King Richard the II from the Almeida BEHIND THE SCENES / NT LIVE www.digitalstudiome.com22 / JULY 2019The approach to fi lming NT Live broadcasts is to prioritise the audience in cinemas for that night. The camera direc- tor is given complete fl exibility in choosing camera positions, so that the performance can be captured from the best seats in the house and with a sophisticated camera setup, involving tracking shots and, for example, when appropriate, a crane. The audience in the National Theatre are aware that cameras will be present, so the theatre is transformed into something of a live studio. Bretnall shares that the other big chal- lenge when broadcasting in high quality UHD that every minutest detail of the stage production is captured, and not all of them may be fl attering. “When you are sitting 30 or 40 metres away in a theatre, you cannot see every detail with your eyes. But a high defi nition or 4k camera captures all the blemishes in the make up, the wigs and laces, how tacky a costume could be or if a set needs painting since it’s been standing for six months.” To prevent these unwelcome surprises, two full camera rehearsals take place be- fore each broadcast, with time in-between for the stage director and camera director to work together to discuss how best to capture the production. The use of high-defi nition cameras and the scale of the big screen allows the aes- thetic to remain theatrical and off er audi- ences a dynamic full stage picture. This is matched with the intimacy the camera can off er, taking the audience to the heart of the emotion and the nuances of the actors’ performances. The broadcasts also features live interviews (usually with members of the creative team) and, sometimes, a pre-show fi lm which off ers a look behind the scenes or greater insight into the production. “For our full rehearsal, we take all the cameras in, do a fi rst rehearsal and then we go watch that fi rst rehearsal in cinema we see how it has been translated from stage to the big screen so we can see all that needs to be fi xed to make it work for the big screen.” Over 10 seasons of NT Live, Bretnall has done 85 plays. “For each play I have done over the last 10 years I am given complete freedom to start from scratch. Each play is a challenge as its a new production.” However, his most challenging produc- tion so far, Bretnall says, has been Angels in America. “It was a very demanding play as it is actually two plays and very long ones at that; of 4.5 hours and 3.5 hours duration each. Maintaining your con- centration for that length of time, getting satellite links, and keeping an audience engaged was all terribly challenging. He describes All My Sons, which was broadcast in Dubai as “a tour de force of Arthur Miller, depicting a great time in American history”. “It has a fabulous “THE USE OF HIGH- DEFINITION CAMERAS AND THE SCALE OF THE BIG SCREEN ALLOWS THE AESTHETIC TO REMAIN THEATRICAL” NT Live broadcast of All My Sons from The Old Vic BEHIND THE SCENES / NT LIVE www.digitalstudiome.comJULY 2019 / 23 cast of actors who have never been on the London stage before. It was a hot ticket in London for many weeks, beautifully staged and captured. Director Jeremy Herrin did a great job of capturing it and getting it out to an audience who would have never had the chance otherwise to see that cast.” All My Sons was broad- cast to 34 countries in Europe, Asia and America. Another milestone for Bretnall’s team was the NT Live broadcast of War Horse, which was the fi rst live to cinema in 4k. Bretnall says plays for UHD broadcasts are cherry picked, based on the ones the team sees “having longevity or tertiary sales”. Plays selected for NT Live are natu- rally the ones that will translate best to a big screen and appeal to a world-wide audience. The National Theatre produces around 25 new productions a year, which vary from Shakespeare and classics to new plays, and the aim of the programme is to have NT Live as a microcosm of the repertoire, “showcasing the diversity and wider ecology of British theatre.” Currently NT Live broadcasts 8 to 12 plays a year. Speaking of the logistics of the broadcast, Bretnall says. “We get the best equipment contracted from outside broadcast facilities. We have the same sound team wherever possible across all the shows. The broadcast director is hand-picked to match what we believe is the temperament of the stage director and stage design team. Some directors are more conventional than others, and some are more out there and wacky! We try and match our approach and our staff - ing to the working environment so that the stage team works well together.” During a NT Live broadcast, Bretnall has a standing OB van that can take up to 30 cameras, recording devices and trans- mitting facilities. Next to it is the satellite truck which uplinks it directly to European cinemas and can arrange a downlink into a teleport in the west of England. “We then fi bre it across to the US and organise a satellite to go live there. We do storage as well, so we can defer it across the various timezones. Coming back to the site, there’s a sound truck for the sound mixing. There is another truck with all the camera equipment and the cranes dollys - And a crew of 35 across any one show. It’s a bit of a circus really.” Other broadcasts confi rmed so far in 2019 are Small Island, the adaptation of Andrea Levy’s Orange Prize-winning novel. NT Live works with a range of art house and independent cinemas, as well as major chains, but also community centres, cul- tural venues and theatres (such as Warwick Arts Centre in the UK or the Guthrie and Shakespeare Theaters in the US). In the UK, NT Live works directly with cinemas for distribution and now reaches over 680 screens, 90% of all cinemas in the UK. Outside the UK, the distribution part- ner is BY Experience, who also distribute the Met Opera and Bolshoi Ballet broad- casts globally and a wide range of alterna- tive arts content. Sally Field and Bill Pullman in All My Sons Jenna Coleman and Colin Morgan in All My Sons BEHIND THE SCENES / NT LIVE www.digitalstudiome.com24 / JULY 2019UP IN THE CLOUD A sophisticated AI-driven asset management system can pay dividends. But there are costs associated with easing the pressures on content demand By Adrian Pennington he rise of OTT, direct- to-consumer models, and the multiplication of consumption outlets and devices are pushing a T strong need for business transformation in the industry. The economics of distribu- tion and consumption have turned on their heads and acceptable costs per title, per platform, have dramatically eroded to the point where high levels of au- tomation are now a necessity for the large broadcasters, content houses and the small producers alike to stay in business. Primestream’s Media I/O Editor TECHNOLOGY / MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT JULY 2019 / 25 www.digitalstudiome.comWhile the creation of new outlets is a boon for business as a whole, the reality of the acceleration of release windows, coupled with the increasing number of outlets and new international distribution opportunities, is really leading to some interesting consider- ations for media organisations: • How do I create more versions for less money per version? • Is it possible to increase version cre- ation and distribution outlet deliveries automatically? • Can my single-purpose work tracking system and silos of media processing equipment work together? • How do I bring my creative, produc- tion and marketing teams together to share information and media to avoid duplication and increase our off erings? • What do I do with IMF? THE CHALLENGES Media organisations need to reinvent themselves and this is driving the trend towards new platforms, technologies and standards that facilitate an effi cient and eff ective chain for multi-platform content production, publishing and delivery. Archives are spread across tape and cloud and locating the fi les you need is time consuming and cost prohibitive. “At times we have so many assets coming in that we can often miss the details our teams need to create bet- ter content,” says Hans Douma, VP of operations at Primestream. “Repurposing content is one of the main tasks for media organisations today. The challenge lies in every platform needing diff erent parts of the content, and to make things even more complicated, every platform needs content in diverse formats and delivery methods. I am still amazed at how much content is being distributed even today on consumer platforms, such as Dropbox and WeTrans- fer. Needless to say, these platforms may not be the best choice if you require pro- cesses to be automated.” Broadcasters and post houses face tremendous challenges around pack- aging and delivery for multi-platform distribution. “The major challenge is the sheer number of version requirements and the complicated work required to manage multiplatform distribution, including QScan, the quality control tool from Editshare José Luis Montero, regional sales director Tedial. TECHNOLOGY / MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT 26 / JULY 2019www.digitalstudiome.com Tedial’s SmartLive sports and live event production assistance software tool EDL assembly work, platform unique metadata requirements and ‘hand- shakes’ during the delivery process, con- ditional rights and maximising revenue of these versioning activities,” says José Luis Montero, regional sales director for Tedial. “If you add language transla- tions and subtitle/caption support, it can more than triple the supported number of versions. Typically, companies put manual labour on these eff orts, which is costly and due to the number of repetitive chores, occasionally error prone.” MANAGING IMF One important new standard that fa- cilitates an effi cient and eff ective chain for multi-platform content production, publishing and delivery is the Interoper- able Mastering Format (IMF, SMPTE ST 2067). It addresses the needs of a title from the point at which it is creatively fi nished and then travels to various companies for localisation, legal compli- ance fi xes, dubbing into new languages, subtitling and other adjustments for consumption around the world. “Manipulation of IMF structures need more than just a Media Asset Management solution, it needs orches- tration,” says Robin Kirchhoff er, head of marketing operations, Dalet. Dalet Galaxy fi ve is its fl agship MAM, workfl ow orchestration and editorial platform. One of its key features is the ability to orchestrate and automate a wide range of tasks using a business process management engine which is key for propelling IMF workfl ows. “IMF requires a mix of metadata that can often be found in diff erent databases,” explains Kirchhoff er. “This metadata is often brought together at the last moment when an IMF composition is ingested or used to make a deliverable asset. Dalet Galaxy fi ve’s orchestration capabilities - with a user-friendly graphi- cal design interface - allow triggers such as a fi le being ingested or a QC task being completed to start one or more pre-designed workfl ows where the IMF Supply Chain’s business rules control the overall fl ow.” Tedial has built a software tool to automate these complicated assembly jobs and make IMF a simple, machine assisted operation for management and users. Using the Tedial Evolution Version Factory, the end location requirements are defi ned and named as unique desti- nations, so that the workfl ow can be told ‘Send this media to that destination,’” “AT TIMES WE HAVE SO MANY ASSETS COMING IN THAT WE CAN OFTEN MISS THE DETAILS OUR TEAMS NEED TO CREATE BETTER CONTENT” Hans Douma, vice president, operations, Primestream TECHNOLOGY / MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT JULY 2019 / 27 www.digitalstudiome.comMontero explains, “The entire process is managed behind the scenes, including media transformations, EDL assemblies, fi ltered metadata, delivery methodolo- gies, and XML packaging requirements and platform integration/ ‘hand-shakes.’ Built on the backbone of a single work- fl ow, this Version Factory supports the automation of delivery of thousands of versions per hour and it is fl exible, scal- able and easy to manage.” Despite the strictness of the IMF struc- ture, the real world of media distribution is still riddled with a wide variety of diff er- ent codecs chosen by diff erent media organ- isations for reasons that made good local sense at the time. That’s where a software with media-aware business rules becomes really important. Whether the media is SD or UHD at a frame rate of 24fps, 25fps or 29.97fps in an aspect ratio of 4:3, 16:9 or maybe even in 3D or VR, there will be a best way of processing the media for delivery. Any MAM that stores rich, accurate, techni- cal metadata about each piece of media will be able to drive the workfl ows. INTRODUCING AI/ML In truth, the exponential growth of content to be acquired, produced and monetised is a challenge that only AI and automation can solve. But to begin there is an important cost consideration. The cost of AI engines can vary greatly from very expensive to aff ordable. Running your entire archive through an intelligent video indexer, for ex- ample, will be costly, perhaps prohibitively so. The key to success is to have the ability to combine the right mix of AI models for a given content type and outcome expected. Primestream’s Media I/O offers a software- based solution TECHNOLOGY / MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT 28 / JULY 2019www.digitalstudiome.com“A second and very important consider- ation is data alignment,” explains Kirchhof- fer. “When you are using multiple AI engines – and you will be very shortly – you must make sure that elements like your named entities, topics, and key phrases are consis- tent across all your datasets. What’s more, datasets gathered from your AI models need to precisely align with the taxonomy of your complete library.” He points out that services like the Dalet’s AI-led Media Cortex will perform most of the essential data alignment tasks for you. Increasingly we expect automated and accelerated transfer methods to be triggered by a single action, delivering to diff erent various distribution points. “AI may provide easier abilities in quickly tagging content, with less resourc- es involved, however, in the initial phases the AI engine needs to be ‘educated’ so it can improve its behaviour and provide more accurate results,” says Douma. “Bit-by-bit we develop and evolve the AI into a powerful engine for our custom- ers to enrich their assets with,” he says. “By off ering AI/ML in a bring-your-own AI model, we allow customers to pick the engine that suits them best, then integrate it into our workfl ow. Additionally, in our Metadata-Timeline view, it is easier than ever to browse through facial and object recognition, speech-to-text transcription, sentiment analysis, and more. Companies can leverage cloud sources for ‘teaching or training’ of the software, such as the location and celebrity facial recognition already available in public cloud products, or they must train the engines themselves. “MANIPULATION OF IMF STRUCTURES NEED MORE THAN JUST A MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT SOLUTION, IT NEEDS ORCHESTRATION, MANIPULATION OF IMF STRUCTURES NEED MORE THAN JUST A MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT SOLUTION, IT NEEDS ORCHESTRATION” Robin Kirchhoff er, head of marketing operations, Dalet Dalet Galaxy fi ve is its fl agship MAM, work- fl ow orchestration and editorial platform TECHNOLOGY / MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT JULY 2019 / 29 www.digitalstudiome.comNext >